Okay playwrights, are we ready? We understand characters, setting, conflict, and how the three interact. We’ve mixed things up with large and small groups of characters. We’ve played with central reflectors, disrupted rituals, and surface comedy. We’ve read the works of master playwrights and seen how they put these elements together. Now, let’s write a play. Maybe a great play. Maybe a crappy play. Maybe an unfinished play … Nine days is at least long enough to make a very good start. Did you know John Osborne wrote Look Back in Anger in 17 days, from a deck chair on a pier? Or that Arthur Miller built himself a shed on some land in Connecticut, sat himself down, and wrote the first half of Death of a Salesman in a single night (he finished the play over the next six weeks)?
Day 22- Generate some raw material. Do some freewriting to identify the sorts of conflicts and emotions you’ve experienced in your life that could form the heart of a play. Then think of ways to deploy those experiences in a fictional setting. Adapted from The Playwright’s Handbook, by Frank Pike and Thomas G. Dunn (Revised Edition, 1996).
Maybe you already have an idea in mind for a play. If so, do some free writing on that idea. Start with a basic elevator pitch–what you would tell a friend if she asked you what your play was about but only had five minutes before her plane started boarding. If you don’t have an idea already, or if you have only the kernel of one and need to inject it with something personal and alive into it, draw from your own experiences. Think back on your life to a time that still has a lingering emotional connection for you. Shame, regret, disappointment, confusion, bitterness. Dive into those deep emotions. Identify a volatile or unsettled relationship touching on that time and do some free writing around it. Remember to employ your five senses.
Then, brainstorm how to adapt the raw material into a play with fictional characters. Think of this in a couple of different ways. Maybe you take the red beating heart of that conflict and emotion and transplant it into a different setting, connect the arteries, tendons, and ligaments to new characters in a made-up setting. Then, stitch the whole thing up and give it a shock: some inciting event that gets that conflict pumping. Or … plant the seed of the conflict you’ve harvested in a nice patch of earth, water it, and watch as the first shoots and tendrils appear, barely noticeable at first, but there all the same, growing steadily as the play unfolds.
Have fun writers!